The Nobel laureate won plaudits early on for releasing imprisoned journalists. Today, his government depicts journalists as spies and traitors, and is accused of arresting, harassing and murdering them.
On International World Press Freedom Day, the world commemorated the sacrifices of media workers around the world and celebrated the advances made to enshrine press freedoms and permit journalists to freely carry out their critical work.
Unfortunately, for Ethiopian press workers, it is only the needless sacrifices that continue to be commemorated, as 2024 marks yet another year of backpedalling on press freedom.
It is in this spirit that the Ethiopian Press Freedom Defenders, a newly established collective of over a dozen concerned Ethiopian media professionals based at home and abroad, strives to defend the rights of our persecuted colleagues and sound the alarm over the country's diminishing press freedoms.
Ethiopia went from being listed at 110th in the world according to the Reporters Without Borders Freedom Index in 2019, to 141st in 2024. The steep slide is the result of the shutdowns of private media outlets, the mass arrests, physical and sexual abuse of media workers across the country, and the constant hostility towards our colleagues that has forced many to leave the industry or flee the country.
On 3 May, World Press Freedom Day, a number of foreign embassies in Addis Ababa issued a joint statement recognizing the dire state of the country's free press. In response, the government issued a communiqué condemning the statement, claiming that "Ethiopia upholds the freedom of the press."
This couldn't be more inaccurate. Ethiopia does not uphold the freedom of the press in the slightest. In fact, a mere 24 hours before Ethiopia released its rebuttal, our colleague Muhiyadin Mohamed Abdullahi was sentenced to two years in prison for reporting that a visit by Prime Minister Abiy to the Somali region in February, had caused traffic jams in the region. A court deemed this to be criticism amounting to hate speech.
Muhiyadin had been detained since February 13th.
Fellow media personnel who are currently detained and similarly risk unjust sentencing, include Meskerem Abera, Gobeze Sisay, Bekal Alamirew, Tewodros Zerfu, Genet Asmamaw, Dawit Begashaw and Abay Zewdu.
Ethiopian Press Freedom Defenders has determined that over two hundred Ethiopian media personnel have endured unjust incarceration since 2019. Two have been murdered. In 2022, a private media house was targeted in a drone strike for the first time in the country's history.
The initial glimmer of hope that came with promises of political reform in 2018 has long since been extinguished. State authorities routinely violate constitutionally protected press freedoms and have rendered the working environment for Ethiopian media workers an extremely hostile one. Journalists are typically jailed without arrest warrants and can expect to spend months behind bars, sometimes incommunicado.
Imprisonment has been the most common form of punishment meted out against media workers in Ethiopia. In recent years, as civil wars and communal conflicts ravaged the country, government security forces have actively singled out journalists who have worked to document war crimes and human suffering.
Using the state's information infrastructure to facilitate the spread of disinformation, the government succeeded in manufacturing consent for the crackdown on the media, depicting us as spies, traitors, and threats to national security. As a result, during waves of arrests over the past five years targeting media workers, even media associations with a mandate to defend detained journalists, chose to remain silent, or issued ill-timed statements which doubled as subtle support for government clampdowns on journalists.
As such, persecuted journalists, and media workers across the country, lack an assertive, collective voice that is resolute and uncompromising on press freedom. The shortage of Ethiopian media freedom advocacy groups, the inability or unwillingness of other civic society organizations to maintain a robust stance on the issue, as well as the failure and co-optation of organisations with similarly stated initiatives, has left a void that Ethiopian Press Freedom Defenders strives to fill.
By amassing data from press freedom databases, local media reporting and by establishing communication with sources across the country, the collective was able to determine that the number of media workers and journalists who have been detained since 2019 has surpassed 200.
In 2019, there were 25 arrests of 24 media workers.
In 2020, there were 71 arrests of 62 media workers.
In 2021, there were 58 arrests of 53 media workers.
In 2022, there were 46 arrests of 42 media workers.
In 2023, there were 40 arrests of 37 media workers.
In 2024, four media workers (and counting) have been arrested.
In total, the listed data shows that there have been 244 arrests of 201 journalists and media workers since 2019. The true figures are far higher, with dozens of additional arrests reported but unconfirmed by our Collective, which plans to add the names of detainees to the database once their detentions can be confirmed.
For Ethiopian media workers, imprisonment often includes beatings, interrogations, lengthy stays in solitary confinement and violation of visitation rights. Women face sexual abuse and are denied sanitary products. Upon release, media workers are issued with threats either to censor their work or to halt it completely. This has forced many to practice self-censorship or, for print journalists, to work without a byline. Others quit media work completely or chose to flee to neighbouring Kenya. Years of financial struggles often ensue, compounded by the fact that journalists face defamation and demonisation by state media, which typically portrays them as terrorists. The resulting physical pain and mental anguish bring on incalculable suffering that hardly subsides upon their release.
Among local journalists, Tajura Lemebebo, who has worked in broadcast for Ubuntu TV and Oromia Media Network among others, holds the grim record of six arrests between 2020 and 2023, being accused of "terrorism" among other trumped-up accusations. The ordeal forced him to flee to neighbouring Kenya in 2023.
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The Economist's Tom Gardner holds the record among the foreign press, with two arrests in 2021 prior to his deportation from Ethiopia in 2022.
Two journalists were murdered in 2021, including Tigrai TV reporter Dawit Kebede Araya, who was shot dead by Ethiopian soldiers in the city of Mekelle on January 19th, and Oromia Broadcast Network reporter, Sisay Fida, shot dead by unidentified assailants on May 9th in Dembi Dolo.
The Ethiopian Press Freedom Defenders collective mourns five years of diminishing press freedoms, murders, arrests and persecution of our colleagues and friends across the country. We are keen on collaborating with like-minded associations and collectives with an uncompromising stance on press freedom and a sincere desire to voice the plight of journalists in Ethiopia, regardless of media affiliation, ethnicity or political (in)convenience.
There can be no progress without a free press.
Ethiopian Press Freedom Defenders is a newly established collective of over a dozen concerned Ethiopian media professionals based at home and abroad. It defends the rights of persecuted journalists and sounds the alarm about the country's diminishing press freedoms.
